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Most clients who also come in wanting a new system refuse to take any other operating system than XP...why?...because they are used to XP and are too afraid of everything else. If it don't look like XP, they don't want it and are intimidated by it so when putting a Windows user in front of a Linux machine, you are guaranteed to get the results that Canonical got from their study.

The reason people like XP is because... it works. Windows 7 offers little benefit in user interface over what we've used for years.

Unity probably isn't a bad idea for tablets and similar touchscreen devices which run a limited number of applications and probably only one at a time, but it's a lousy interface for a desktop; having to hunt through a massive list of applications is insanely inefficient compared to starting them from a menu, for example. I also find it incredibly unintuitive as the designers seem to have thrown away the mouse interface so that it can work on a touchscreen; why can't I just right-click on a file to delete it, for example?

Gnome 3 seems to be a simiilar step backwards for people who actually know how to use a computer, slowing down the interface in favor of fancy graphics effects.

The gnome2 "Classic desktop" also is full of bugs atm also. I have been using natty since alpha2 with classic desktop only. And about all the problems that where present in alpha2, mostly compiz related, are still present in beta2. And i don't expect them to be solved before release, since the classic desktop hardly gets any development.

Most bugs in an alpha release so far, but that's what you can except with alpha and i'm not complaining about that. But atleast with other releases bugs tended to get fixed before relese.

Infact i think the number of bugs on the classic desktop only grew between alpha2 and beta2.

So they not only have a badly working main desktop, the fallback is also full of bugs. This release is going to be great!

Hard to argue that. Unity would have had to have been production ready by Alpha2 with the understanding if it wasn't, it would be pulled out in Alpha 3. That way the fallback to Gnome2 would have been an orderly affair prior to the beta's hitting and Ubuntu's name wouldn't get racked through the mud.

I'm not hating on Unity per se... I'll have to wait for it to be stable and workable in 11.10 to do that without feeling a pang or two in the 'ol conscience. It just really should have been in an explicitly experimental branch rather than releasing as the main face of Ubuntu.

But, no reason to get all lit up on it. Shuttleworth has something in mind and it *is* his baby really to do with as he wishes. He's been spending a lot of his own money keeping this going, and I respect that. *However*, if the direction continues to be contrary to the Ubuntu Community, then the Ubuntu Community will at some point walk. Simple as that. It's in the Open Source world and we're a finicky/harsh bunch much of the time. See OpenOffice and MySQL as the two most recent examples where the sponsor and community had a massive disconnect and the community left en-masse. More close to home for Ubuntu, Mint is already spinning itself clear and re-basing directly on Debian.

but it's a lousy interface for a desktop; having to hunt through a massive list of applications is insanely inefficient compared to starting them from a menu, for example. I also find it incredibly unintuitive as the designers seem to have thrown away the mouse interface so that it can work on a touchscreen; why can't I just right-click on a file to delete it, for example?

I agree with you on the applications list, I would much prefer to have the drop menus but it is something I can get use to.

As for right click delete, I am able to do that just find, except I would prefer the word "Delete" over "Move To Trash" but again it is a minor thing that I can live with.

Unity stil a failure

I have been using ubuntu 11.04 since alpha2 and i have a laptop with hd3200 igp. I have to say i am not very fond of unity i kept checking it from time to time but from start i used classic ubuntu option.That desktop was stable enough for me. New kernel has nice kms and video improvements for my card i like that! I would say that unity will never be accepted except for fanboys that dont care about usability. Aldo i would say its worth updating and use classic ubuntu option is still same old gnome that we know. Whats bad about panels?windows 7 has panel,kde4 has a panel. Its a good thing when some projects fail couse ppl get to try new DE like kde xfce4 and so on. In the future if everyone make touchscreen interfaces and push them to be used as desktop ones KDE might be the only same DE to use. Make a thing different just for the sake of its just stupid. Gnome was never a smart community they eat more money that KDE does have slower development cicle dont care about user or usability. In the end they`ll bring the old panel style back on invent a dock.

No, no, no.
Ubuntu fanboys always tell us Canonical is the only one who understands usability.

I thought it's a Gnome fanboys domain. As far I found KDE to be the most usable DE. Unity is not yet what I'd like to see, but it's better than Gnome Shell. Users should be able to do with their systems what they like and the way they like. Unity is better in this than GS, but KDE is the best.

This is probably an only reason why people still use it. XP usability sucks a lot. I can't imagine using it for something more than launching a game.

XP's interface is largely the same as 2000 (or can be made to be so), which is largely the same as ME/98/95. Same interface, flawed or not, for 16 years. Vista tried to be different and people didn't like it, and now people are moving to 7 out of reluctance.

The 12.04 release will be the major barometer. Unity will have been around for a year and it's the next LTS. If it's still not what people want a lot of people will start jumping ship.